grasp and in the next flung up both arms to break his grip. “Damn you,” Tasfalen
yelled at him, “damn you and damn this lunatic house to hell!”
And the man tumbled against him, collapsing in a way that nothing alive ever
felt. Straton caught him in first reflex, recoiled on the second with the dead
man tumbling down off the bed and onto his feet. Movement drew his eye and his
reflexes: he seized Ischade’s wrist in an access of disgust and horror as she
got to her knees; he jerked her off the bed and to her feet in her
disarray and the entanglement of the sheets and the lord lying on his face on
the floor against his feet.
“Damn!” he cried, and shook her by both arms till her black hair flew and her
slitted eyes rolled white in her head. “Damn you, bitch, what do you think
you’re doing, what have you done?”
Her eyes opened wider, still showing whites, blinked again with the dark where
it belonged, a widening dark, a dark that filled all their centers and turned
those eyes into the pit of hell. “Get out of here.” It was not the voice he
knew. It was a feral snarl. “Out! Get out, get out, get out-“
The blood pounded in his veins. He shoved at her, flinging her onto the bed in a
flood of grief and rage and outright hate. She scrambled to get to the other
side, and he dived after her to stop her, hurling his weight on her, felt her
under him and himself in control for a moment, himself in a position to teach
her once for all that he was not hers to tell to come and go and do her errands
and do it all her way, when she wanted it, if she wanted it….